Politics and Culture

November 30, 2010

Paxman seems, if not quite deferential, certainly a little awed in the presence of a man - more or less a contemporary - who, frankly, has made more of a mark both as a journalist and a writer.

I suppose it's always a fall-back position for interviewers to claim that they're not there necessarily as themselves but rather as proxies for the average viewer-on-the-couch, but still, Paxman's fairly predictable questioning didn't particularly inspire, and nor did his seemingly genuine shock that someone could actually bring themselves to criticise Mother Teresa, or mock the Koran and the Bible:

“Saying you find the Koran laughable: in what way does that help the spread of reason?”

“Well, I think mockery of religion is one of the most essential things. One of the beginnings of human emancipation is the ability to laugh at things.”

As the headlines report on the apparent readiness of the Chinese, according to Wikileaks, to drop their North Korean ally, here's the video, from the Telegraph, from which this image was taken of the young woman foraging for grass this summer. It tells its own story.

Evidence of the rising tide of discontent has been captured on film by a small group of "citizen journalists", who newsgather at great personal risk to themselves. They then carry the footage across the heavily guarded border into China.

In one dramatic clip, a woman who is trying to board a truck to take her to work flies into a rage after a uniformed policeman demands a bribe. She shouts at him and waves her finger in his face until he backs away. Emboldened, other people come to her aid, shouting at the officer.

The clip ends with the unidentified woman yelling: "This cop is an idiot!"

In another chilling scene, a dejected and apparently emaciated woman is seen scavenging for grass to feed her animals. Asked what she herself eats at home, she pauses before replying flatly: "Nothing."

[See Isabel Hilton's piece at CiF, suggesting that these latest Wikileaks might make matters worse. See also comment#2 - "I hope that they can hold out against the death march of capitalism. They are one one the few socialist countries left." Satire, perhaps? Or perhaps not.]

November 29, 2010

Weren't Wikileaks meant to be all about embarrassing America? It's amusing that the main point to have emerged so far with this latest tranche of documents is that Arab governments have been putting pressure on the US to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities. This shouldn't be news to anyone who's been paying attention, but still, it's not quite the exposure of shady neo-con machinations that many were perhaps hoping for.

The Guardian, one of the main Wikileaks recipients, have gathered together a range of commenters to ponder matters of Wikisignificance: some familiar (Gary Younge, Seamas Milne), some not so familiar. Abbas Edalat and Phil Wilayto, in the latter category for me at least, simply refuse to believe what they're reading:

The latest batch of WikiLeaks revelations give the impression that it is the Arab states that are most energetically pressuring the US to attack Iran. That's definitely putting the cart before the horse.

In the first place, the Arab governments mentioned as being hostile to Iran – Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain, Abu Dhabi and the United Arab Emirates – are all undemocratic, unpopular regimes that depend on US support to stay in power. As such, they seem to have absorbed the US claims that Iran is the region's greatest threat to peace.

A completely different view, however, is held by these governments' own subjects, among whom Iran's independent stance is hugely popular. According to a recent poll that asked Arab people in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates to name two countries they thought were the greatest threat to the region, 88% stated Israel, 77% stated the US and only 10% mentioned Iran.

This might, of course, have something to do with the relentless diet of anti-semitic and anti-American material that their media pump out. Or indeed knowing just what answers are expected of them.

Without a doubt, Iran does represent a threat to US imperial interests. Iran takes no orders from Washington, its natural resources are off-limits to Western corporations and it has no love for the corrupt, pro-Western governments that dominate the region. As such, it represents an obstacle to US hegemony.

To demonise Iran, the US has for eight years promoted the myth of an Iranian nuclear weapons programme, much as it demonised Iraq through its false charges about weapons of mass destruction. And while this myth has formed the basis for four sets of UN sanctions against Iran, the US has never provided the first shred of proof and its "evidence" of Iran's nuclear weapons studies has now been shown to be simply a fabrication.

No, the principal threat to Iran remains the United States, which for years, prodded by nuclear-armed Israel, has declared that "all options are on the table."

On 5 December, Iran is scheduled to begin revived negotiations with the five permanent UN security council members, plus Germany. This would be an ideal time for Washington to make the following declaration: that it will not attack Iran, will not allow an attack by Israel, will end all sanctions against Iran, will recognise Iran's right under the UN's Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to pursue peaceful nuclear power, will return Iran's nuclear file from the UN Security Council to the IAEA in exchange for Iran's stated pledge to allow the intrusive inspections of the IAEA's Additional Protocol and will agree to discuss all outstanding differences in a spirit of mutual respect.

The myth of an Iranian nuclear weapons programme? Good lord. Is there anyone else, anywhere, who believes that Iran's nuclear programme is purely for peaceful purposes?

And the tone of admiration is unmistakeable: a threat to US imperial interests!...takes no orders from Washington!...its natural resources are off-limits to Western corporations!...it has no love for the corrupt, pro-Western governments that dominate the region!...it represents an obstacle to US hegemony! Yes, if you want the latest up-to-the-minute writing in support of a theocratic regime led by a madman who believes in the imminent arrival of the Twelfth Imam, which kills gays, stones women to death, tortures its opponents, pumps out anti-semitic poison while threatening to wipe Israel off the map and maintaining what amounts to an official position of Holocaust denial, then The Guardian - the UK's leading left-wing newspaper - is the place to go.

Might one of the side-effects of the Yeonpyeong Island incident be to rouse the South Koreans from their apathy about the North? Even the Cheonan sinking passed without the general outrage that might've been expected. But now:

“We never thought they would attack civilians,” Mr. Hong said Saturday as he and other survivors sat somberly drinking soju, an alcoholic beverage, near a makeshift shrine to the two men in this South Korean port city. “North Korean soldiers have full stomachs from our support, and now they repay us by firing at us. Next time, we should repay them by shooting them back.”

The South did shoot back, but many Koreans consider the limited response feeble compared with the hourlong artillery barrage on Tuesday, in which North Korea rained about 180 shells on the island, killing the civilians and two South Korean marines.

The ferocity of the attack and the deaths of the civilians appear to have started a shift in South Koreans’ conflicted emotions about their countrymen in the North, and not just among those who were shot at.

After years of backing food aid and other help for the North despite a series of provocations that included two nuclear tests, many South Koreans now say they feel betrayed and angry.

“I think we should respond strongly toward North Korea for once instead of being dragged by them,” said Cho Jong-gu, 44, a salesman in Seoul. “This time, it wasn’t just the soldiers. The North mercilessly hurt the civilians.”

That is not to say that he or other South Koreans will really push for a South Korean strike; people south of the border are well aware that the North could devastate Seoul with its weapons.

But the sentiments reflect a change of mood in a country where people have willed themselves to believe that their brotherly ties to the North would override the ideological chasm between the impoverished Communist North and the thriving capitalist South.

The attack seemed to challenge one of the underlying assumptions of a decade of inter-Korean rapprochement, which had slowed but not stopped under President Lee Myung-bak: that two nations’ shared Koreanness trumped political differences, making a return to cold war-era hostilities not only undesirable but also impossible. “I never thought they would attack us people of the same race,” said Hong Jae-soon, 55, a homemaker who fled Yeonpyeong with most of the island’s other 1,350 residents after the attack.

Quite why the death of two civilians should cause the kind of emotional reaction that never greeted the loss of 46 marines in the Cheonan is perhaps a puzzle best left to those with a better understanding of the Koreans. As is the emphasis on race. But it does seem that the mood in the South is changing.

The North, too, seem to have realised that somehow killing civilians was a bad move, expressing regret for the deaths - perhaps a first for North Korea - even if they tried to pin the blame on the South, ludicrously, for using "human shields".

November 28, 2010

Dutch photographer Bert Teunissen has been engaged on his project of picturing domestic interiors since 1997, and by now has a considerable archive. He only uses natural light, so the whole enterprise captures a certain domestic ambience that feels timeless but is in truth gradually disappearing with changes in architectural style and living arrangements. It's what you might call - in the spirit of La France Profonde - "deep Europe". As he puts it:

‘The inhabitants of the houses I seek and photograph, still know how something should taste, how it has to be made; they understand the importance of time and ripening, they know the meaning and value of repetition – daily – yearly... Their houses and ways of life are fading out of our societies, forever, together with their knowledge. It is my aim to capture this, wherever I can find it, before it disappears completely.’

There's also a clear nod in the direction of the great Dutch masters of the domestic interior like Vermeer and de Hooch. Here's Geetbets, Belgium:

"I had to wear the full niqab when I was 8 years old," she says of the face veil worn by women here. "I couldn't breathe. I saw the world in dark colors. I fell down because I couldn't see when I walked. Men should put this on for one day. They would change their thinking. They don't know how horrible it is under sun, heat and sweat. It's a kind of torture. I decided I wanted to see the beautiful colors of life — red, blue, green. Not black."

The speaker is Amal Basha, who runs the Sisters Arab Forum for Human Rights in Sana, Yemen.

"Violations on many levels.... Now they even want to put niqabs on our voices. They make it a shame for women to protest. They want us to lower the tune, not to be heard." [...]

Redemption is unlikely soon. Yemen's parliament is a man's domain of suits, tribal dress and daggers. Out of 301 seats, one is held by a woman, despite a quota that allots women 15% of the chamber. Women face entrenched discrimination: Nearly 70% are illiterate, and the clan ethos and the Sharia law upon which the government is based often ignore them.

And the arcane proclamations of holy men confound. One of the country's leading religious voices, Sheik Abdul Majeed Zindani, a cleric with a henna-dyed beard whom the U.S. considers a terrorist, proclaimed that he had scientific proof that women cannot speak and remember simultaneously.

"Yemen is the home of the Queen of Sheba," Basha says. "How can you say women can't govern? Yemen is a failed state today and men have been the rulers."....

Yet it is references to the veil, that burdensome scrim of cloth she so despises, that run through her conversation, symbolizing rights denied.

"There is nothing in the Koran to say that women should cover their hair," she says. "But if I say this, they say I am not a Muslim.... Why should women be covered in black? Invisible. Who invented this idea? Walls around our houses, veils over us, walls around our freedom of expression. Walls."...

A friend tells her: "You are one of only 31 unveiled women in this country."

November 27, 2010

My name is Zeyneb Celalyan. I am 27 year old and have been held in Kermanshah’s prison as a political prisoner. I was sentenced to death by the Iranian High Revolutionary Court.

Due to the intensive and unbearable torture I have been subjected to, psychologically and physically I am at a critical condition. My illness in serious and I am deprived of the right of having or requesting to have a lawyer.

The whole trial of mine took only few minutes. The judge accused me of being the “enemy of God” and said that I shall be executed soon.

I appealed to the Judge to allow me to speak to my family for the last time. But in response he told me, “shut up”.

November 26, 2010

Yep, it's all about taking responsibility for yourself. Merle Haggard sits out on the front porch and tells us how "that leaves only me to blame 'cos Mama tried":

Though he didn't exactly get "life without parole", he did do three years in San Quentin for trying to rob a Bakersfield tavern in 1957, so at least he knows what he's talking about.

Did he always know what he was talking about? More than any other he's the man who gave Country its right-wing redneck image back in the late Sixties, before the Byrds and Gram Parsons made it OK for hipsters to listen to it again.

The scars still linger. Andrew Sullivan posted "Okie from Muskogee" a couple of days ago, with the comment "Not all poseurish musical acts are uplifting and liberal. Some are smug and Palinesque". He got some complaints, with one reader pointing him to Merle's Wikipedia entry:

1969's apparent political statement, was actually written as an abjectly humorous character portrait. Haggard called the song a "documentation of the uneducated that lived in America at the time."

Critic Kurt Wolff wrote that Haggard always considered what became a redneck anthem to be a spoof, and that today fans - even the hippies that are derided in the lyrics - have taken a liking to the song and take humor in some of the lyrics.

Well, this is nonsense. His supporters may have tried to make the song out as some kind of ironic commentary, but it was taken by his audience just as it was meant to be taken: dead straight. Its companion piece, as it were - The Fightin' Side of Me - is more of the same populist bull. Merle knew his audience and knew just what he was doing.

Another of Andrew Sullivan's correspondents has this:

Yes, he did do that song. But he's also distanced himself from it repeatedly. I saw him live in Salinas a decade ago and after he sung that song, he received the applause, paused, and then said "You know, when I wrote that song, I was dumber than a rock."

Dumber than a rock? Hmm.

He knew just what he was talking about, Merle. He gave people exactly they wanted to hear. For the mass Country audience it was straight America-first taking responsibilty for yourself if-you-don't-like-it-go-live-somewhere-else. For his hipper audience he was ironic, or would admit to being dumb at the time. Whatever ticked their boxes. Everyone went away happy.

November 25, 2010

Fraser River, an endangered river environment, Pitt Meadows, B. C., Canada. Mr. Lord writes “In 2010, the Fraser River became the third most endangered river in British Columbia due to pollution, agriculture, industrialization, and urbanization. In the 18 years in which the list of endangered rivers of B. C. has been kept, the Fraser River has been in the top 5, 17 times. The Fraser river is home to the endangered white sturgeon. In 2009, 90% of the expected return of spawning sockeye salmon did not show up in the Fraser River. A catastrophic collapse of the sockeye salmon population may have occurred, possibly due to overfishing, pollution, and climate change.”